Against the Great Rethinking about Trump

Plenty of pernicious threats persist

President Donald Trump.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

For almost the entirety of President Trump's first year in office, the lion's share of his critics have treated him not just as a flawed or ill-prepared president, but as a fundamental threat to democratic government in the United States.

A year in, however, this unified front of Maximum Emergency is crumbling under the weight of second thoughts. Not only is Trump's polling ticking upward, with his approval rating recently breaking 40 percent for the first time since last May in FiveThirtyEight's aggregation of polls, but commentators from across the political spectrum have begun to pull back from the dire warnings that have characterized so much analysis of the president since his implausible victory 14 months ago.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.